Selected Letters II (1925-1929) - H. P. Lovecraft (Edited by August Derleth & Donald Wandrei) (1968).
Note: The scan is missing all of the table of contents except its last page (Page xx). I felt it was worth posting even in its present form.
If you're a Lovecraft fan, there's plenty to enjoy here. H. P. L. was a voluminous letter-writer, corresponding with hundreds of individuals throughout his lifetime. Some speculate that his letters, many of which no longer exist, might number nearly 100,000, some of which ran to 70 pages in length.
This second volume of Lovecraft’s letters covers his last year of married life and residence in New York, his separation from his wife and
return to his native Providence, and the beginnings of his antiquarian
explorations. It includes as well detailed accounts of the origins
and development of his long critique, Supernatural Horror in Literature,
his fantastic novel, The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath, his macabre
tales, The Horror at Red Hook, In the Vault, The Call of Cthulhu, and
others. Among literary matters of special interest are his
ghost-writing for Houdinin, his solution of the puzzle concerning the
Voss-de-Castro-Bierce authorship of The Monk and The Hangman’s
Daughter, and his correspondence with such other noted fantasistes as
Frank Belknap Long, Clark Ashton Smith, Vincent Starrett, Donald
Wandrei, and August Derleth. Not only are his daily life and events
recorded, his views of post-war America of the 1920s, but the full
range of his mind and imagination are illustrated in his concept of the
cosmos, while his vivid narratives of horror-dreams rank among the
most remarkable in the literature of nightmares. Many gems are imbedded
in these pages – essays in full or in miniature, serious or leavened
with satiric humor, on such diverse topics as Salem, cats, liquor,
smoking, superstition, sex, heraldry, genealogy, machine civilization, modern
art, intellectuals, the beauty of New England, and countless more. A
mechanistic materialist in his philosophy, a rationalist, a skeptic, a humanist and, above all, a truth-seeker always, Lovecraft proved himself an original thinker and a bold philosopher. Few letter-writers have rivalled
him in depth, variety, insight, and the inquiring challenge that
combine accurate scholarship with unlimited imagination, in prose that often scales the heights of poetic and prophetic vision.